‘Janus?’ Bronstein enquired.

Did they really need the doctor? Saul felt sure Hannah could complete the operation by herself now that she had the necessary equipment. Perhaps it would be safer if he just raised the automatic and put a bullet through the side of Bronstein’s head.

‘Not your concern,’ Hannah replied.

‘I’m just curious, obviously.’

‘Put it this way,’ she said, ‘you already know enough now to get yourself permanently adjusted through a recycling plant. Do you really want to know more?’

‘Well, things can’t get much worse than you describe. Yes, I do want to know.’

After a pause in which yellowish three-dimensional space sectioned by cubic gridlines began to expand inside Saul’s skull, where surely there could not be room for it, she replied, ‘If you think things can’t get any worse than that, you obviously don’t know enough.’

‘Hey, the Inspectorate catches up with me and I’m in for adjustment anyway – or more likely a bullet through the back of the head. Yeah, I know they can stick you under an inducer until your mind’s turned to jelly, but that’ll never happen to me.’

‘Why not?’ Hannah asked.

‘A lot of us have them now: a Hyex implant at the base of the skull.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘I can kill myself simply with a thought.’

‘A lot of you?’ Hannah echoed.

The space inside Saul’s skull had meanwhile grown vast. In fact it seemed infinite now; something underlying his mind and his perception of . . . everything, but still he managed to interject, before Bronstein answered, ‘He’s a revolutionary . . . Hannah.’ By then he had the automatic raised and pointing straight at Bronstein’s face. The doctor seemed strangely unsurprised by this. ‘Over there.’ Saul gestured with the weapon towards the far side of the theatre and, after a shrug, the doctor moved to where instructed, leant back against a work surface, and folded his arms.

‘How much longer?’ Saul asked Hannah.

‘Just a minute or so and I’ll be able to glue this bit of skull back in,’ she replied.

He had just wanted the time frame, not the physical detail.

‘What are you two?’ Bronstein asked.

‘None of your business,’ Saul replied, calculating the best move to make next. As his capacity for thought expanded, it seemed to be sapping his capacity to act. Other considerations impinged, like, if he shot the doctor now, this place would be filled with a mist of blood that might be infected with something, or he might damage computer hardware linked to the microsurgery.

‘Only Committee executives get given the kind of stuff in your head, and they certainly don’t come here to have it fitted,’ Bronstein said.